ව්යවස්ථාවක් හදාගැනීමේ ප්රශ්නය 3
The third part of Ivan’s series on constitution-making examines the Soulbury constitution, drafted around D.S. Senanayake’s wishes by Ivor Jennings, whose weak safeguards for minorities Lord Soulbury later regretted, and Colvin R. de Silva’s 1972 republican constitution, whose unitary state, primacy for Buddhism and Sinhala-only laws the Federal Party rejected. The Tamil representatives walked out, and the road led to the 1976 Vaddukoddai resolution for a separate state.
ගල් පර්වතය අයිස් පර්වතයක් බවට පත්වීම
Reading the March 2014 Western and Southern provincial council results, Ivan finds that the government’s vote, once rock-solid, has begun to melt, most of all in the populous Western Province. The UNP remains divided and the rise of General Fonseka’s party is notable. He warns that the government is playing with fire by defying the UN Human Rights Council, since Sri Lanka as a UN member cannot escape scrutiny of the violence used to crush its rebellions.
ජිනීවා යෝජනාවේ ප්රතිවිපාක ගැන
After the Human Rights Council’s March 2014 resolution on accountability and reconciliation, Ivan argues that in the modern world no war, internal or external, ends without an accounting. Stirring patriotic feeling is easy, but the public, used to the open economy since 1977, will not bear the cost of sanctions. If the government keeps acting headstrong, sanctions will follow, and the ruin of the country will be written against Mahinda Rajapaksa’s name.
නාගරික දේපොළ කොල්ලකෑම
Ivan describes the organised gangs that seize valuable urban land and houses, often with political protection, and gives examples: a wealthy donor’s Cinnamon Gardens property left to the Maharagama Cancer Hospital that was taken after his death, and a land fraud at Malabe in which a woman scientist who bought land was cheated, until police finally arrested a man who had become a multi-millionaire through such deals and then released him after a statement.
රාවය වර්ණවත් කළ අශෝක
A tribute to Asoka, one of the three founding staff of Ravaya and its chief artist for twenty years. Ivan first met him at Sarvodaya’s Vishva Lekha press, recalls how his village of Hungama linked him to young rebels during the 1987–89 years, how he designed the pages of all of Ivan’s books, and how he left Ravaya around 2006 so that his younger brother could keep his job. Asoka died, remarkably, on his own birthday; many who had built the early Ravaya came to his funeral.
වරද කාගේද අපේද? මහින්දගේද?
Ivan argues that once the country turned to violence, both rebels and the state came to rule through fear and to believe only their own convictions. The state crushed the Sinhala youth rebellion, then the Tamil one, and in the process the South killed Wijeweera and many of its own. The tragedy, he writes, is that after these victories the country learned nothing: there was no Emperor Asoka turning from war to righteousness, only a triumphalism that left the nation where it started. Blame lies with society as well as with Mahinda Rajapaksa.
අර්බුදය මට පෙනෙන හැටි (අවසන් කොටස)
Ivan divides the post-independence period into two eras and traces the second, from 1977: a government that could not be changed, thuggery institutionalised in the universities and unions, Black July and the JVP ban, and the violent era of 1985 to 2009, including Indian intervention and the state’s brutal suppression of the second JVP rising under Premadasa. Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance continued the corrupt system, and Mahinda Rajapaksa, after defeating Prabhakaran, chose a stinking path instead of reconciliation, leaving the country as isolated as it was when Prabhakaran was strong.
අර්බුදය මට පෙනෙන හැටි
Replying to a reader who said he blames everything on the executive presidency, Ivan traces the crisis further back, to a crisis of thought. Buddhism became confined to the Sinhalese, and independence came without a mass struggle, so the new state inherited narrow limits. He follows the distortions through to 1977 and beyond: the crushing of the 1980 general strike, the burning of the Jaffna library during the 1981 district council election, the 1982 referendum, and Black July, blamed on the JVP, which pushed both Tamil and Sinhala youth towards violence.
ජනාධිපති හිතුවක්කාරී නොවී නැවත සිතා බලන තැනකට නොගියහොත් ඇතිවිය හැක්කේ මහා විනාශයකි.
As the March 2014 Geneva resolution approaches, Ivan argues that a head of state is the country’s temporary trustee, not its owner, and that the President is gambling the nation’s fate. The media and religious leaders are failing to explain the danger, and the government’s claim of a Western conspiracy is empty. No country can survive in isolation; accountability for the end of the war should be dealt with at home, and the government must reconsider before sanctions follow.
යූඇන්පියේ ආණ්ඩු ප්රතිසංස්කරණ යෝජනා
Ivan warns that neither the government’s belief in its permanence nor the opposition’s hope of winning an election reckons with a third possibility: collapse into anarchy, as happened in the Tamil North. The country is in deep darkness over the rule of law, nation-building and constitutional reform. He sets out how the executive presidency distorted the state, from Jayewardene’s undated resignation letters and the 1982 referendum onwards, and argues that the UNP’s new constitutional proposals will not be credible until the party honestly admits its own responsibility for creating the system.